The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday requested California counties to supply it with lists of all inmates in their jails who usually are not Americans, in addition to the crimes they’ve been accused or convicted of and their scheduled launch dates.
The Justice Department stated in an announcement that its “knowledge requests” to the counties — together with Los Angeles and San Francisco counties — have been “designed to help federal immigration authorities in prioritizing the removing of unlawful aliens who dedicated crimes after illegally coming into the US.”
The requests add one other layer to the Trump administration’s already roiling turf warfare with California over immigration coverage and state and native sanctuary legal guidelines. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers have been swarming the area making 1000’s of arrests as half of President Trump’s name for mass deportations, and the Justice Department is already suing the town of Los Angeles over its sanctuary coverage.
State officers have lengthy defended California’s sanctuary insurance policies, which typically forbid native authorities from imposing civil immigration legal guidelines however present for exceptions in circumstances involving prison offenses. They’ve additionally criticized the administration and ICE brokers for his or her latest arrest ways in Southern California, together with by citing figures that present {that a} majority of these arrested had no prison convictions.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s workplace instantly known as the legality of the calls for into query, and stated it could evaluate the directive and monitoring its implementation “for compliance with the legislation.”
State legislation — specifically the California Values Act, or SB 54 — “permits county jails to switch a person into ICE custody if ICE presents a prison arrest warrant for a violation of a federal prison immigration legislation, however it doesn’t permit for the wholesale notification to DOJ of people housed in county jails, regardless of whether or not or not they’ve even been discovered responsible of against the law,” a spokesperson for Bonta’s workplace stated in an announcement.
“President Trump and his Department of Justice can not bully our native legislation enforcement into breaking the legislation.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department just lately resumed transferring some jail inmates to ICE for the primary time in years, citing prison exceptions to state and native sanctuary legal guidelines.
A spokesperson for L.A. County referred questions concerning the request to the Sheriff’s Department.
Requested concerning the request throughout a Civilian Oversight Fee assembly Thursday morning, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna stated details about all county inmates is already publicly out there on the division’s web site.
“The minute you get booked, processed and also you get Livescanned, that’s a nationwide system, so brokers of the federal authorities will know you’re in custody,” he stated. “So it’s not that we’re notifying them, it’s an automated notification based mostly in your fingerprints.”
The Justice Department stated that it hoped the counties would voluntarily adjust to its requests. But when they don’t, it stated, it could “pursue all out there means of acquiring the information, together with via subpoenas or different obligatory course of.”
It stated that whereas “each unlawful alien by definition violates federal legislation, those that go on to commit crimes after doing so present that they pose a heightened threat to our Nation’s security and safety.”
Not each noncitizen in the U.S. is in the nation illegally, on condition that there are noncitizen everlasting residents and different visa holders. Nonetheless, as half of its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has given heightened scrutiny to folks in these classes, as effectively.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, in her personal assertion concerning the requests, stated that eradicating “prison unlawful aliens” from the nation was the administration’s “highest precedence.”
“I look ahead to cooperating with California’s county sheriffs to perform our shared responsibility of preserving Californians and all Individuals protected and safe,” Bondi stated.
In Could, Luna’s division transferred inmates from its jails to ICE for the primary time since early 2020. Between Could and June, the division handed 20 inmates over to the federal company.
At Thursday’s oversight assembly, Luna stated the division obtained 995 civil detainer requests from ICE in 2024, and that it didn’t adjust to any of them, which it’s not legally required to do. However he stated that the division needed to flip over the 20 inmates as a result of it obtained federal judicial warrants from federal authorities for every of them.
He stated he anticipated such warrants to extend, which might improve the quantity of inmates turned over.
“These are authorized paperwork signed by a choose. We can not deny these,” he stated.
Max Huntsman, the county’s inspector normal, and different consultants have stated the Sheriff’s Department is required by federal and state legislation to adjust to the warrants, and the method is authorized below state and native sanctuary insurance policies.
Occasions employees writers Rebecca Ellis and Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.
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